If you’ve seen The Martian, you’ll know that Matt Damon survived 543 Mars days by growing potatoes in the native soil, fertilized with his own poop.
On Thursday, judges from the Canadian Space Agency visited Ecoation to evaluate the firm’s growing system as part of the Deep Space Food Challenge, which is awarding more than half-a-million dollars in funding to finalists. Meanwhile, NASA is evaluating U.S. companies in the stateside portion of the contest.
“What we built is an indoor food production system that grows everything from tomatoes to mycelium,” Schneider said. “But the underlying component that goes into all food is taste,” Schneider explained. “If it doesn’t taste good, you’re not going to eat it. So that’s why we’ve chosen things like super sweet tomatoes.”